Robex Lundgren virkblogg.

Have any of you played in other bands?

Still playing in: Shiny Brown, B.SON, Scheissediebullen, Heck

Former bands: Diavolo Rosso, Attention Armageddon, Dark Tharr

How is it that you started playing music? Most of us play music since being teenagers or even earlier. But GoW started a coupleof years ago when Stef, Jorge and our former bass player, who knew each others foryears, decided on forming a band to play some stonersludgewhateverslowmusic.They asked Julian to join as drummer and after our first bass player had left the bandStefan and a couple of months later Dave hopped on the moving train. Basicallyeveryone in the band knew one or the other member for years already, playing in bands,going to shows or hitting the bar together for a long time. So everything grew more orless “organic”.

What are your names? / Who plays what? / How old are you?

Stefan (33) Bass

Julian (32) Drums

Jorge (29) Guitar

Stef (39) Guitar

David (34) Vocals

Have you had other previous members? As we started the band, a friend of ours was playing bass. But after some time hedecided to leave the band and so Stefan joined us playing bass. We also had anotherworking title back in those days (Earthmover).

Did you make music even when you were young? Most of us started when we were teenagers. Mostly in HardcorePunkbands.

Where are you from? We are from Freiburg and Karlsruhe in Germany.

What year did the band form? Early 2009

What's your style of genre? Currently it’s mostly described a blend of black metal, doom and sludge.

How often and where do you rehearse? Since 3 members are living in Freiburg (where we also have our rehearsal space), andthe other two are living in Karlsruhe, which is 130 km away from Freiburg, we do notrehearse as much as we’d all love to. Maybe twice a month. But it always depends onwhat’s going on at the moment. If we’re preparing a tour or a release, we rehearse morefrequently.

How have you developed since you started with the music? We started as a classical sludge band, in the vein of IRON MONKEY orNOOTHGRUSH, but over the years we started to blend more and more doom and blackmetal into our sound.

Are you looking for a booking agency, and what are your thoughts around that? Basically we are all pretty well settled in the DIYscenein Germany and Europe ingeneral, and even have a lot of friends in the United States and Latin America who couldset up a couple of shows or even a tour. So, time given, we would be totally capable ofputting up awesome road trips on our own. But we just don’t have the time to play thatmany gigs. All of us work or study full time and also are too occupied with other band orart projects to really get it going in a more professional way. And, to be honest, right nowwe are all pretty OK with the way it is. Sure, if we get the chance, we would do a tourthrough other countries than  Germany and its neighbours for sure. But right now wewould be happy to find the time for 2or3dayweekend trips every other month.

Are you looking for a label, and what are your thoughts around that? Our first two records and the compilation on which we appeared were released by afriend of ours, Marcel of Blind Date Records. He gave us the opportunity to make theserecords, which was really awesome for us, since it’s such a good label and we reallyappreciate his support to this day. But Marcel stopped doing the label some time ago,and since one of us had put up his own record label in the meantime (Meta MatterRecords) we of course released the last record on our own. Markus from Per KoroRecords joined us on this release, which turned out very good for the distribution of the

record.

Who does the composing and writes the lyrics? All our lyrics are completely written by David, our singer. The rest is done all together.Everyone in the band, even our singer, knows how to play at least one other instrumentwhich is very helpful in communicating ideas between each other.

Do you start with the music or the lyrics? Mostly we start with writing the music, and later on David adds and finalizes the lyrics for the song. But sometimes he even has lyrics and so both develops independent from each other.

Do you compose in a certain environment? By now we compose mainly in our rehearsal room. For the first LP Jorge came up withmost of the riffs or at least some ideas for riffs. But in the meantime the music starts togrow in a more organic way, as we find riffs in a jam and everybody adds some creativityor criticism.

Have you done any covers live? We do have a cover of “Impact” from CHAIN OF STRENGTH out on the compilation CLONE IV by Blind Date Records. We used to play that live a couple of times but our own stuff is always more exciting to perform so we don’t think that song will be heard very often live in the future.

What language do you sing in? All lyrics are in English.

What are the least and most people to attend one of your gigs? The show in Mainz on our first tour had the least visitors we had. There were maybe 3people. But the show was also the one with the best imaginable food and even breakfastwe had till this day. The promoters were so awesome! We immediately started to feelreally ashamed about the whole situation, but they said it’s OK for them. So nice!The most attendees must have been at the NEVER CONFORM FESTIVAL in Bregenz /Austria and also the show we played with OMEGA MASSIF in Mannheim / Germany wasreally packed. Maybe some 200+.

What ages are most of your concert attendants? In between 25 to 50 maybe? We really don’t know for sure.

Do you always play the same songs live, or do you vary? Most of the time, we play a set of our newest songs, but the setlist varies from show to

show.

Do you have a regular place you play live often? The KTS in Freiburg is one of the locations we played the most shows.

What was your first gig like? The worst … (some of us disagree on this one)

What was your latest gig? The best … (again some of us disagree). But generally speaking our gigs tend to get

better and better.

Have you had to cancel a gig? Yeah, of course we had to cancel gigs. As far as we remember it was mainly because of broken cars, etc.

Where have you played live this year?  AKK Karlsruhe, Linkes Zentrum Lilo Herrmann Stuttgart, JUZ Mannheim, exZess Frankfurt, KuZeB Bremgarten (Switzerland)

Where do you plan to gig the coming year? We don’t have too many plans anytime soon, so bring it on, guys, get in touch!

When did you start to sell merchandise, and what do you have for sale? We started selling shirts quite some time before our first LP came out. We do now sell merch on Bandcamp, Bigcartel and eBay.

Where can people buy your merchandise?

You can order all our releases and all our Tshirts directly from us.

There’s the Bandcamp site: http://ghostofwem.bandcamp.com and we do also have a

Bigcartel shop: http://ghostofwem.bigcartel.com

What do you think about people downloading music instead of buying records now a days? We don’t think anyone of us has a problem with downloads. With some of our otherbands we even insist on offering downloads for free.

And why shouldn’t you download music? Not everyone is interested in having a big record collection or has the money tobuy new stuff every month. A no one should be excluded from having nice things justbecause of a lack of money. So we don’t really see a point in the whole discussion aboutdigital rights and downloading. When we were younger everyone used to make tapecopies. Maybe the amount of music you got at home has changed when you compareMP3 files with tapes. But some of us had a shitload of tapes, about 300 or 400, and thatwas mainly stuff someone like us just couldn’t afford to buy.

How do you think the music industry have changed because of this? Well on the one hand, we think, the big major labels and their featured artists still make ashitload of cash and we think most of the lamenting is made up shit. Also the structure ofmusic business has changed. There are tons of small labels with just a handful of artists.And unfortunately some of them think that they should be able to make a living with it.Awesome if you can! And even more awesome if it would be possible for more artists.But we don’t think that this is how things are going to work. The structural change inparts of the music business won’t affect the nature of the capitalist whole. It will alwaysbe about making more money and kicking out competitioners. Which obviously sucks.On the other hand there emerged a lot of new options for artists to promote them on theirown, either on a professional level or DIY. And this is what matters to us. Do your ownmusic, create awesome artwork, promote yourselves, and do whatever you want andlove.

What do you think of my work? Everyone in the scene is important. From the ones playing and producing the music to the ones listening to it or writing about it. So, thanks a lot for your efforts and keep it going!

How do you think and know that this interview will help you in the music business? We don’t know and actually don’t give a shit. After all it would be lovely to get a couple of more people in touch with our music, but in the end those individuals will decide if our music is worthy for them or not, no matter what one says or writes.

Do you have any role models or idols? Since almost everyone in the band is also a bass player we all really admire the bass

player from B.SON!

Why do you think that they exist? To radiate pure awesomeness and make us shine in their light!

Is it easier to find inspiration from older bands, or bands that are more active today? We would love to say that it does not make any difference. But in fact it’s mostly the older bands. Maybe it’s because when you get older, for most people it’s harder to find stuff that amazes them like in an age when they were growing up. Everybody would love it if this happens, but sometimes you really doubt that you can still find new bands that have such an impact on yourself like e.g. BLACK FLAG or whomever else they listened to.

How do you get psyched for a gig? The prospect of cold beer afterwards.

Do you have any new material? We’re currently working on new material for our next full length. There is one older song, which was never recorded. It was written between the split LP with S.O.T.T. and the split LP with GOLDEN GORILLA. And there is one brand new song, which we played on our last two concerts for the first time. The plan for the next months is to write some more tunes, so that we hopefully can start recording the next full length record early 2016.

What are your web sites?

Blog: http://ghostofwem.blogspot.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ghostofwem

Bandcamp: http://ghostofwem.bandcamp.com

Bigcartel: http://ghostofwem.bigcartel.com

How can people reach you? [email protected]

What are your plans for the future? All 5 of us agreed that the next release should be a full length record. After two split LPs, it’s time for a “real” record again. We think this is the better format for us. We’re all glad that we had the opportunity to share records with two great bands such as SHADOW OF THE TORTURER and GOLDEN GORILLA. So for now we’re definitely concentrating on writing new material, maybe play some shows now and then, when we have the

opportunity.

Do you have something to add? Fuck NSBM! Stay antifascist